Nicole Dilhomme (middle) was brought on a motorcycle today to meet us at a school in Grand Ravine. Everything there seemed normal in spite of the fears of unrest over the political situation in Haiti. You can read more about Nicole in the first blog below on Jan 6﻿. At the last report she was totally paralyzed from a shock. Today we were astounded at her steady recovery, actually able to walk. As our visit was being planned we thought that we should try to raise some money to give her because of her principal role-volunteer- in the Grand Ravine Community Human Rights Council (GR-CHRC) begun in 2005 to deal with massacres. (Click here for history) Seated to left is Patrick Estinphil, another original member of the GR-CHRC. The current President, Jean-Ernest Point-du-Jour organized this visit with several of the GR-CHRC members. Nicole wrote convincingly about her reasons for being a human rights advocate when Tom Luce was helping organize the GR-CHRC. Read the PDF file in the right column.﻿ She herself experience the horrors of growing up poor in a violent community. She was placed in the "Restavek" (Creole for "stay with") program the infamous way for poor parents to put their children to work in other family homes. In spite of many efforts to do away with this source of all kinds of abuse there are still an estimate of 300,000 children in what is defined internationally as child slavery. She was abused sexually and physically. As a core member of the GR-CHRC she was on the committee that said education for the poorest children among the community was their #1 need. She was centrally involved in the choosing of children, purchasing school supplies and following the scholarship recipients. In 2014 (our year #4) she was stricken with paralysis unable to support herself. We thought that someone as dedicated--always a volunteer--as Nicole should get some recognition. People who have known about her work in the past donated $725. We gave her this money as a token recognition of her service. A devout Catholic, Nicole is a member of St. Bernadette parish which manages the school, Mary Magdalen, where we have 20 students. Elena Gaudet, our HHE treasurer, gave Nicole a beautiful set of rosary beads with holy water from Lourdes.

Renald Aima and his mother, Pastor Madame Dominique, stand in her church where we visited today in the heavily populated neighborhood of Delmas 58. Renald and his wife, Mary attended our cultural night celebration on Jan 9. They had baptized their baby daughter at St. Columba some 20 years ago but had heard that now St. Columba had a Haiti scholarship program. They had a great time and expressed a desire to come and join us to work on the project. It happened that Renald was coming to Haiti while we are here. He is helping his mother with his brothers to rebuild the home she herself built when her children were small. Pastor Madame Dominique is an unbelievable single mother of 8 children, the founder of her very active church and even after open heart surgery is still actively preaching, running her church. She prayed with us today that the HHE program will continue successfully. We will have an expert on the needs and ways to help impoverished Haitian children. In this one family there are many tragedies and many awe-inspiring recoveries.

This picture of students walking from school this afternoon in downtown Port-Au-Prince near the central park, "Champs de Mars", shows that things are back to normal since last Monday when people were worried that the violence affecting Haiti over the very flawed final election for president would shut down schools and affect things badly. There were some demonstrations today but we haven't heard of any violence.